How much does stress affect your health?

[El Cid]

I heard on the radio a woman blaming stress for her bad spots, I too am feeling stressed, and come out in spots. Dry skin on my left hand, had dry skin before, but not this bad.

My girlfriend has spots on a good part of her body, and stress is thought to be a factor.

[Solomon1]

Have had a bad cough for the last week

 

Pretty sure if I hadn't been so stressed - wouldn't have been so bad or lasted for so long

[Fogey]

Stress can severely degrade your physical health and cause serious psychological problems. Left undealt with stress could literally kill you.

[Mecky]

Stress can kill you or rather lead to conditions which can kill you

[JFKvsNixon]

It's not stress that affects your health, but ineffective management of that stress that has such an adverse effect on our well being. The problem is that modern society has evolved in such a way that we have stopped managing our stress effectively.

[Mister M]

When I went through a bereavement a few years ago, I had a nasty case of urticaria (hives). Stress used to my mental health more (anxiety and sleeplessness), but as I get older I think it affects me more physically.

[GerryBooth]

I was diagnosed with tennis elbow and was sent to a chiropractioner. He said I was suffering from stress and your weakest point fails. Worse scenario is a heart attack or stroke.

 

For me it was my worn out elbow musclle. It has took over 2 years to get over it but the first sign of stress or anger and its back. Calm down and its gone.

 

Always got stressed out over the years but not safe in your later years. Now I let more things go as in the past I would contest it.

[Mumma4]

I've been feeling very stressed out, anxious, and upset for quite a while now. The last couple of weeks I've had an almost permanent headache and have had several heavy nose bleeds. I think stress can effect you in the strangest ways.

[handypandy]

Almost 20 years ago, I was in a job where I was always under pressure. I got up one morning, went to the kitchen and literally could not make up my mind for a minute or two, whether I should put the kettle on first or stick some bread in the toaster. Heading for one first, then the other.....back again....back again. I know it sounds crackers now, but it was a life changing moment. The doctor told me that if I didn't get out of my job, I was looking at a nervous breakdown.

 

I took the advice and thought, 'Thats it... I'll join the dole queue and live out my days pottering in the garden.... sod it"

 

That feeling lasted about a month until I was bored out of my head and set out as self employed. My income took a real nosedive but I've never regretted it for a second. I probably ended up with more stress than ever, but stress I put myself under rather than having it imposed. I reckon in the end, it saved my sanity (such as it is...lol)

[medusa]

In biological terms when you feel stressed you're releasing lots of hormones like cortisol and epinephrine, which have huge effects on the body.

 

If you imagine that moment when something really scares you, your sympathetic nervous system is stimulated, you have a massive release of adrenaline, cortisol and epinephrine and this puts your body into 'fight or flight' mode which could be of great benefit to you at that time. Your body pumps more of your blood into your muscles to allow you to run or defend yourself, and you breathe more to increase your oxygen levels to allow your muscles to do more. To do this, your peripheral blood vessels and internal organs get less blood and your body raises your blood pressure to pump everything around effectively.

 

Now, in that moment this could be helpful to you, but if you continue to have your blood pressure and breathing artificially raised by those hormones, those hormones are going to cause other things to happen, from heart problems and brain bleeds to irritable bowel syndrome and chronic anxiety.

 

They can affect your immune system and anything which is affected by your sympathetic nervous system, such as the waterfall of hormones in the inflammatory pathway which is mediated by histamine can be made worse too.

 

We need a certain level of all of these hormones in our blood at all times, but elevated cortisol levels have been demonstrated in patients who are insufficiently anaesthetised during surgery, and in babies who are in distress either in the womb or during delivery, so this is not a conscious thing- it sits behind our conscious mood and has direct effects on our bodies.